


Almost

by illyriantremors



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/M, Lots of Angst, NSFW, Smut, Super Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 11:03:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9320696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illyriantremors/pseuds/illyriantremors
Summary: Morrigan is stirred from sleep in the middle of a depressing, cold night with a nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach. Finding the darkness calling to her, she spots Azriel on his return from a mission in a less than okay state. When the demons come calling ready to eat Azriel alive with guilt and fear, Morrigan finds him and together they find comfort while imagining the love that could almost exist between them... if they only dared. Set Pre-ACOTAR.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Moriel Smut Week on Tumblr hosted by @acotarshipweek. Day 1 Prompt: "I'm sorry."

A howl whips through the room in a vicious frenzy, sending the open doors to Morrigan’s balcony clanging as they rattle on their hinges. As her body starts at the commotion, she thinks vaguely in her sleep-addled state that she should have shut the doors before she went to bed.

Morrigan has never slept easy in a closed up room. Too many years trapped under a mountain feeling the dirt and stone cake beneath her fingernails while her soul tried to claw free left her with a craving for open air that she can never quite seem to satisfy.

When Rhys brought her to Velaris, that had been her one demand, the one privilege she would ask for as third - that her rooms be large and spacious with a wide balcony almost as expansive as the interior itself and doors to match. There were times she left those doors closed. During the day as she dressed or bathed, it wasn’t such a bother to have them shut and admire the way the sunlight streaming in reflected off the glass. She could still see out over the entire city, so she’d leave them be.

Night was what gave her trouble. When the sun fell and the darkness would creep in, Morrigan would crawl into bed, squeezing herself between the sheets before closing her eyes. It took all of a minute before she was out of bed again that first night in the House of Wind and flying for the balcony doors. The doors could remain shut or her eyes could, but never both. While she slept and all manner of nightmare and monstrosities would visit her mind to torment her, there was no way of knowing what those doors might do whilst shut. What if she needed out? Or even more pressing on her mind, what if someone needed _in_?

There is a darkness collapsing in on her, blanketing her vision when she first blinks her eyes open. It squeezes, pressing on her chest and throat tightly, as she squints for the palest traces of moonlight to see by. This darkness is not so wholly unfamiliar, she realizes. It wraps about her, but doesn’t scare. It lingers on her skin, but only to kiss, not to cripple. And just when she sits up in bed, her eyes finally adjusted to the lack of light about her, the darkness vanishes entirely as though it had been sent to fetch her and would now return home to its master.

Some nights are like that. Morrigan most hates the nights where the darkness blinds and terrifies her upon waking to the point that her nightmares are fashioned into reality and she must once again claw her way to the surface and break free. She does not fall back asleep on those nights. Often she leaves the House of Wind entirely and relief does not come easily.

Tonight she is grateful the darkness is kinder on her, though it leaves a lingering trace of heaviness in the pit of her stomach that gnaws away at her calm. Something feels... not quite right.

Absentmindedly, she runs a hand over her stomach as though she could physically touch the sinking feeling clawing at her gut. Her nightgown is thin enough that she can trace the scars through the fabric where her family abandoned her to the worst demons of this world so many centuries ago before she was made queen over them all.

Before _he_ had saved her.

His name is what pulls her back to the moment of this night, flashing through her like lightning between the clouds, there one minute and gone the next. But the residual thunder that follows never quite leaves her ears, leaves her heart aching with each beat as her body counts down to the next strike of that wildness that burns inside keeping her alive - for his sake.

_Azriel_.

He had found her. All those centuries ago, it had been him who had braved a foreign court, risked death and beyond at the hands of his High Lord and much, much worse for the rules he broke, to come and find her. There were many nights that she was glad the balcony doors were left open and unlocked because it allowed Azriel to hear her screaming and come running for her.

He always came running for her.

As though the room or maybe the elements and the city itself sense her thoughts, those old doors give a groan while another gust of wind comes rushing in so fiercely, the room itself could be gasping for air to breathe. Morrigan stares from her bed at the balcony. There is just enough moonlight that she can see how clouded the sky is. She is surprised it’s not storming. But no - it’s only the simple wind and its wicked ways that have her grabbing for her thin silk robe and walking barefoot towards the open air that beckons her so.

Velaris is dark tonight. The city is sleeping. Only a sparse handful of lights remain flickering among the quiet buildings in these early hours of the morning.

The wind softens in welcoming as Morrigan steps outside. A lick of air kisses her face and Mor scrunches her nose up, pulling her robes tightly around her and tucking her arms over one another at the chill. It is a frigid night, a frozen night, with deadness hanging about the air that tightens the knot in her stomach.

She waits for several minutes surveying the city. Numbness begins to bite at her toes, but she remains rooted to the spot. She is meant to be here tonight, she can feel it. The wind and darkness woke her for a reason and she will not return to the waiting restlessness of sleep until she knows why.

Curling her toes and drawing a deep breathe to settle the nervous energy that grows with unease deep in her bones, Morrigan waits and detests the chill of the night. She would be warm every day if she could, in the sunlight and summer and easy heat that her home provides in the daylight. The cold she feels now is bothersome, wrought with worry and scars that carry her back to memories she would rather forget. It is everything she hates.

As the ache intensifies and her mind wearily tips towards those unpleasant monsters who live in the deepest darkest recesses of her soul, Morrigan feels her body begin to fade backwards when... she sees it. Just a blurring flash between the clouds, a dart of power and storm - a knife in the dark that swivels and falls until it lands on a balcony some stories down from her. Even at this distance, she can tell that tonight was not a good night, can see the way he droops over the landing and grips the railing hard, the rough slope of his shoulders and back breaking in frustration. Even with the wind howling in her ears, she is almost certain she can hear his groan.

She runs immediately.

Never stopping, never doubting - Morrigan runs for him until she is standing just out of view in the shadows and she knows that this is why the darkness beckoned for her tonight. Nothing else could have pulled her so strongly from sleep nor held her so firmly in patience waiting for his return. And now nothing else could possibly move her from where she stands watching him, his shadows moving sluggishly about his person trying to shield and heal the fresh wounds he carries. When his back finally falls and those great membranous wings that carried her so swiftly to a haven of safety all those years ago droop towards the floor, Morrigan finally moves and it is only her voice that bids him turn around and face her.

“Azriel.”

* * *

 

The groans and screams will ring with an endless agony in his ears for weeks. Longer, perhaps, if the cauldron is cruel to him.

Azriel has never shied away from his work. He knows his role to play. He would not ever turn from it for a day should Rhysand allow him to do so. His body was made for the darkness, made for death. Into shadows he was born and into shadows he shall one day go with very little allowed in between.

But he shall never relish the defeat that burdens his shoulders with every kill. There is no glory in death, no matter who’s blood drips off the blade and tonight, Azriel does not enjoy the thoughts that will await him when he cleans truth-teller and the crimson soaked leathers that now dry in the wind against his body as he flies high, high, higher in the sky towards home.

There is such freedom in flying for Azriel. Having the world at his back and through his hair strips away the layers of dirt and grime as much from his soul as his body. When the blade goes through a victim, his fingers curl deliciously in their grip, savoring the sensation of metal on the muscle and bone reaching through to his palms, until... that blade comes out. Each drop of blood that falls to the earth goes before Azriel’s eyes as a drop of blood in the bucket weighing him down. He sees it rising higher and higher around him, those little crimson beadlets becoming a sea of rage and guilt for him to drown in.

He’s trapped.

The kills become faster, but no less precise nor clean. His desire to rip himself from the earth only focuses his battle born and bred skills until the sharpness of his attacks becomes a perfectly orchestrated symphony. Death is always swift, rarely easy.

Perhaps that is why the cauldron saw fit to make Azriel a shadowsinger, he wonders. Death is easy for him. It’s not until the last blow is made and the intelligence wrought, and Azriel is kicking himself hard off the earth to fly for the skies, that he feels his body sensing the rising crimson sea around him. A sea he designed and created himself with talent. No one should be so perfectly attuned to the darkness like that. No one. For Rhysand and his court, Azriel would slaughter the whole of Prythian if he had to. In the end, the body count would not be what turned truth-teller back around on himself. It would be the ease with which Azriel burned the world in darkness and mayhem that did.

That same darkness that suits him now as he begins his descent into Velaris. It wraps thickly around him pushing dust and clouds out of the way so that it might better consume him, swallow him whole. He barely registers the chill that enters his heart as some of that darkness flutters away like an arrow seeking its prey. The streak moves of its own accord leaving a hole behind that Azriel clings to.

His wings narrow behind him, the muscles tensing hard and sharp, and Azriel rockets downward like a comet through the night sky. He is angry. With himself for the consequences his night’s work has reaped, and with the little flare of darkness that betrayed and abandoned him so during his time of need when he had not dismissed it.

He lands in anguish at the House of Wind just as the shadows return to him in full force. They move about him slowly willing time to freeze so he can recover, though stopping time is the last thing Azriel wants. If he could, he would spit time out into the void and will it never come back if it meant he would never have to think of this night again.

The wind is not as cold upon the balcony as when he was in the air. The lack of it gusting about him, threatening to tear holes into his wings, brings the stillness of the city to his attention.

And Azriel thinks he is alone. That is more crushing a blow to him than all the rest in many ways.

He would not have asked her to come and meet him. Not this night when so much damage was done. It’s a weight too terrible to press upon her shoulders. She absorbs enough of his demons as it is and though she fights them all off with skill and victory tucked away in her warm, brown eyes, he hates that she has to do it at all. Hates how he fails her, never coming home to her clean and pure and new - the way she deserves.

But... he would be lying to the world if he said he hadn’t half hoped that foolish rogue shadow of his, the one he would whisper at in secret later when he had recovered as much as he could from this night, hadn’t left him to seek her out. He would be lying if he said he didn’t miss the sight of her, her hands clinging to his skin in soothing strokes the way she sometimes gifted him when his missions were at their worst. He would be lying if he said he didn’t want to hear her voice and bury himself in the silkiness of it, the full body of her laugh that enveloped a room with light and love, all the things his soul craved.

All the things he would never have.

All around Azriel, the wind shudders and fragments of his work swim back to the surfaces of his mind. Agony tears through him as he feels the weight of his work tearing him away from the world, and his body droops in response, his great and terrible wings contorting in frustration behind him.

“Azriel.”

The sound zings through him like electricity. Her voice is soft and careful, but it bids him to answer if he dares, if he... is ready. And it is the one sound that Azriel would never refuse, has never defied since the moment Rhys told him she was dying amid crisp gold leaves of autumn and he might never hear that voice again. He flew to her then. He’ll fly to her now.

Turning around, Azriel cannot believe how beautiful she looks even in such a frail nightgown with the wind tearing through her hair and her eyes undone as she watches him. An angel of mercy sent to help him for reasons Azriel will never understand.

But she is there nonetheless. She is always there when he feels his soul fall to pieces as it does tonight. And she is always waiting with open arms if he needs it.

His savior. His healer.

_Morrigan_.

* * *

 

A question.

A question lies in the way she says his name and when Morrigan looks at him, she can see the shadows haunting every inch of his mind. It’s there in the way his body sags underneath the leather that’s grown too heavy and the way he draws breathe so painfully when looks at her. But mostly, it’s in the way his eyes, once beautiful and deeply hazel, turn to dust before her.

She could lose herself in Azriel’s eyes day and night, live in the hollows that make room for her as the deep browns and vibrant emeralds coalesce into the perfect space for her to dwell. It breaks her heart to see his eyes so empty as he looks at her now. The only thing she fears more than her own death in this world is his and right now, with the way he’s standing so carefully aloof like he wants to shield her from him and reach out at the same time, she sees death in his eyes and it terrifies her.

Morrigan hates the nights he comes home like this. She hates what the world does to him and even worse what he does to himself. Death would warp him, twist and distort Azriel until he was nothing but a ghost of the man she knows at heart. Her friend, her companion, her...

The wind digs viciously at her skin once more sending Morrigan shivering as she tucks the thin robe more tightly around her. And of course, Azriel notices.

“You’re cold,” he says, his face breaking its stony silence. It is the first crack that sends his body splintering, forces him to break his isolated prison and _move_. Whether he uses her chill to free himself from his solitude or as an excuse to touch her - maybe both - she doesn’t know.

A part of Morrigan hates that he thinks of her first when he so clearly is the one in need of help. She won’t let him take care of her, not entirely. Tonight it’s her turn to help him and so she will force him to meet her halfway, her feet shuffling across the cold concrete as they approach one another.

“I’m fine,” she says, as his hands grip her shoulders and she watches his wings stretch gloriously wide to cocoon around them. “Really.”

Azriel doesn’t dare bring her in any closer and she knows it’s because of the blood. She wishes that just once he would let her magic it all away for him, remove every stain until nothing was left - not because she finds disgust in the carnage his hands have brought forth, but for his sake, to clear his mind of the troubles and remove the constant reminder of what he considers a sin upon his soul.

She has never faulted him for his work once. She would never ask him to stop or judge him for the lives he takes away. Azriel’s work is important and with every drop of blood spilled, Morrigan knows that countless more are saved, including her own. If only he could see it that way. If only he could understand that the blood on his body means the whole of Prythian and more to her.

She reaches out, her palm aiming for his chest when Azriel seizes her wrist. “Don’t,” his midnight voice warns. He is not unfriendly. Just... scared. Of what touching him could do.

“I am not afraid,” she says. And though she cannot hear the wind whilst nestled so intimately between his body and his wings where they stand in the silence of the night together, her voice is barely a whisper.

It is when Azriel’s grip tightens on her that she realizes he is shaking and pulling her forward ever so slightly. She steps closer allowing their bodies not to touch so that he might have the space he needs, might keep her free of the blood if that is what he wishes in order to generate a calm. But she stands firm, her free hand coming up to rest gently on the one gripping her so fiercely. The touch she applies is simple - small and delicate. It reassures, it soothes. It says that she will not leave until he tells her, until she is sure he can make it through the night. Slowly, so so slowly, she feels his grip slacken just a smidge giving her license to slide her palm down against him until Morrigan has enclosed Azriel’s hand between her own.

His hand is rough. The scars his brothers poured over him as a child twist like vines around his knuckles where they trace the veins through his skin. Morrigan runs her hands over the scars savoring each one. The story of him is written in the valleys between them and she follows them down past his wrist where she undoes the clasp of his leathers, taking care of his siphon glowing with cobalt, so that she may follow onto the hard, jagged planes of skin covering his forearm.

Azriel shudders at the touch.

She wants to touch him forever. Even just these small, simple touches are enough to make her feel whole and complete again. As his body begins to quiet, Morrigan savors the nearness of him and watches her nightmares flee in his presence. Where once she might have been scared to wake up so alone in the dark as she did tonight, now she is safe. Now she has him. Now she feels at peace.

There are times she wishes it could be more. Her mind can’t help but wander as the cold begins to leave his skin where she touches him replaced with the rich, soothing warmth her strokes provide that draws them that much closer together. It worries Morrigan how much that ache inside her grows each time she’s with him like this. Not just to feel all of him pressed against her, his body connected with her in the most intimate of ways, but to feel his soul yield for her as hers would for him.

What would happen if she drew those touches upon his forearm out. What would happen if he let her undo the leathers up to his shoulders or his chest, his waist. What would happen if she followed the heat kindled in her core - small enough that she could ignore it if she had to, but bright enough that she can’t deny it’s there and doesn’t want to. What would happen if she trailed the burns until they disappeared into a new type of skin where Azriel was sometimes whole and sometimes... not. Where the muscles of his biceps had one held her against him in the autumn woods, where his chest had once cradled her to sleep, where his mouth had once whispered against her ear not to leave him.

She would never, ever leave him. Not for anything. She wants to do the exact opposite - sink herself as far into him as he would let her. She yields to give him that space he needs to survive, but if the barriers were lifted, Morrigan knows that Azriel is an expanse she would plunge herself into as endless and enduring as the heavens.

With each brush over his skin, she sees them together, forces the demons to quiet in his chest until it is only him holding on to her and no one else. Until he is reaching back for her, peeling the thin straps of her nightgown back, his lips daring to press upon her neck with the tenderest of kisses. That one kiss would be enough to end her if she didn’t crave so much more of him. The thought sends a sigh as old as Prythian itself singing out of her and Morrigan finds her fingers pausing upon Azriel’s elbow just where the leathers stop their unraveling.

When Morrigan looks up, Azriel is watching her with a longing look for _something_ , and at last, she sees a spot of color return to his eyes.

* * *

 

He wishes she hadn’t stopped.

For the first time since he left, Azriel gets a taste of freedom when Mor undoes the leathers and gently brushes his arm.

This woman, this angel from the mother above. Somehow she always knows how to heal his wounded and weary soul, how to cure the pain piercing him, and removes the stains that blemish his being. He should never have underestimated her ability to cleanse him. As he watches her and feels the weight on his shoulders lifting with every stroke of her fingers, Azriel finds none of his burden latching on to Morrigan. Her light is pure. Her eyes remain bright. He knows she is aware of his hesitancy that curses them both and she has kept her promise to respect it. But her touches...

Oh how her touches save him. He asked her for nothing and she gave him just the tiniest fragment that he had room for, enough to let the heat creep back into his bones and warm his heart again. Azriel finds himself reaching more and more for that touch, leaning into her until their foreheads nearly touch. His body has stopped shaking, a mercy, but his breaths are drawn out as he watches her. As he begins to _want_ for her.

And that’s when the touches stop, her fingers just resting on his elbow and Azriel curses silently. It is both heaven and hell to feel her abate, to know that she will go no further and he will not be tempted to give in, and to also know that he is separated that much more from her when she is so close.

Morrigan looks away from her work and Azriel finds her eyes with his, the pair of them locked in on each other while the wind whispers at the back of his neck a thoughtful warning. He’s close to her now - when did they get so close? The thinnest sliver of air passes between them as their bodies stand rigidly apart trying not to connect, like a shard of glass exists in that negative space and nothing more. And he can smell her, that citrus and sharp cinnamon scent dancing off the delicate strands of her golden sun-kissed hair. On instinct, he reaches out to brush it off her face and even his shadows do not stop him, they fall in her presence.

Morrigan closes her eyes just as Azriel’s fingers brush her cheek while he guides the hair behind her ear, and she hums low and merry at the feel. It makes Azriel’s pulse quicken, sends a weight into the front of his skull that drags his head down that fraction of an inch it needs until their foreheads finally meet, and the tip of his nose is hovering just over her own.

He could kiss her. It would be so easy to slip into that with Morrigan. If he could just get over the stains on his skin and the venom on his blade, he would be with her. Morrigan makes him forget about those failures in moments such as these, when he can see how they might have a future together, when the light she carries with her everywhere comes chasing his darkness away.

_“Morrigan,”_ he prays, and it is enough that she is folding in to him, her arm snaking around his neck while the other continues to hold his hand against her at her shoulder. And Azriel can’t help but obey the movement, his free arm wrapping around her waist and where before he wanted nothing but distance between them lest he mar her, now he pulls her in as close as he can manage. For all anyone would know know if they were watching, they look like a pair of lovers waiting for a gentle melody to start that they might dance to and serenade the night away.

It is close. So close. And Azriel wants it all even if he can never have it.

_Let our hearts merge_ , he cries out in thought. _Let our souls connect - Morrigan._

_My Morrigan._

This is where the line stops and Azriel knows it, but tonight when he is so sick and heavy laden, his mind wanders on where it wants to go and he lets it. Lets that delicate control he has spent centuries honing slip just enough that he can imagine where his Morrigan leads so that he might at least get some reprieve on this cold and brutal night.

He might carry her. Pick her up and fly her to the balcony of his rooms. He might set her down upon his bed and enjoy the way the moonlight plays upon her skin through the window. He might peel back her nightgown with agonizing slowness until she is in nothing but the delicate lace undergarments he can see now peeking through her thin nightgown and she is shaking her head at him for how much he tortures her with his time.

He might take forever, draw it out until she is trembling before him and still unable to fall over that brink he so badly wants to push her towards. He might strip her of those undergarments she wears, bearing her for him in her entirety, allowing her to lay back on the bed as she watches him sit back and undo the rest of his leathers. Of course, Morrigan would insist on helping - reaching up and removing the leathers herself so that she might pull him against her when he is finished, drag him down onto the sheets waiting to hold them for eternity.

Azriel might kiss her, might part her lips as she moans with a gentle cry and his tongue sweeps in to taste her. Her hands would fumble at the motion as they work earnestly at undoing his pants, removing the final barriers of clothing between them and they are left exposed. And in that moment that Azriel finds himself so wholly undone before his salvation, he might pause a final time only to find her hands guiding him to her body urging him - _feel me._

He might feel all of her - too much of her. He might take her breasts in his hands, lick and caress his way down her neck while she runs her fingers through his hair gasping his name.

His name. 

His name, his name, his name - it would be his utter undoing. Every syllable would light a fire in his muscles, press a hardness into his cock. He never wants to hear another man’s name come off her lips if his own would sound so sweet. And _her_ name - _Morrigan_. How many ways could he say it before he grew tired of the sound? Azriel is sure that the count is infinite. The call of her name would have Morrigan grabbing at whatever pieces of him she could find, to beg him back up to her lips whilst her hips would nudge at his crotch, begging for the feel of him inside her.

It is a desire he might never believe she wants, but the way she would look at him with nothing short of _love_? Azriel could not deny that love anything. He would feel it as he enters her, as he moves inside her and enjoys the way her body sings for him. Morrigan would wrap her legs tightly around his waist, her hips rising with each thrust to meet him in perfect rhythm while a chorus of moans escape them both.

And all through the night, as long as it might take, he would hold her hands, would grip and squeeze and stroke making love to her and confessing the deepest secrets of his soul.

Never once would they leave each other.

Never once would they let go.

But always would they love each other.

Until the sun rises and pleasure is rippling across the nerves beneath their skin and Azriel has the privilege of watching his Morrigan come for him before he spills him inside her. Soft smiles blooming across their faces. Sleep tugging them down against the pillows where they might rest in the comfort of each other’s arms...

This Azriel knows is what he might find in the arms of Morrigan who he holds now on that balcony, who came when he needed her, who answers always his every call and cry.

But there is a darkness that has tainted Azriel so completely, he fears he will never be rid of that one dark blot. He is not ready to ask her to purge him of such a great truth. Not yet. It scares him too much what might become of his savior if he shared those horrors with her, opened up his mind and revealed the cringing creeping beast within who kills without a thought, the benefits long forgotten in the process. It opens a chasm in Azriel so wide, he dare not cross it even while his heart cries out at the thought of what they could be together and Azriel curses himself for it.

He is a bastard born nobody who trails in the wake of death.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly into her hair. It is both for her and for himself that he confesses. And it feels as though it is never enough.

* * *

 

Morrigan pulls back the moment the words jump from Azriel’s lips, enough to look at him and hold his gaze for what feels to her like a century - near on five hundred years of waiting and watching between them. The hand around his neck pulls back and cradles his face, her thumb stroking softly along his jaw.

And all Morrigan can do is smile. Smile for her shadowsinger who has fought and killed and risen from the ashes in her name. It is a smile of the sun, a chance to find solace and peace in the warmth. She only hopes that he will take it, will let her guide him home one more time before he is called to take flight once more.

_Let me take care of you_ , she thinks. _Let me love you. You have nothing to be sorry for_.

She knows what has passed between them this night. She knows the darkness that lurked in his blood calling him into the depths of hell. And she knows the strength of love between them that kept him out of that miserable hell. She went there too. She felt it for herself, imagined what it would be and knows it never will, but still - _she felt it._

And she loves him all the more for it.

"I’m sorry,” Azriel says again, his voice quivering as she holds him. He has stopped shaking and his eyes are hazel by the light of the morning sun that has begun to fill the space around them, shining through the membranes of his wing to illuminate those beautiful golds and reds that harmonize there.

“I’m not,” Morrigan says. She sees Azriel’s brow furrow, not in anger - but relief. “Let’s go,” she offers and Azriel takes her one final time into his arms and lifts her into the sky towards the balcony to his room or hers - it doesn’t really matter which - so that they might sleep and find some peace in the morning at long last.

xx


End file.
